


Bloody Mary

by shadhahvar



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Bloody Mary References, Gen, Horror, Post-Canon, Urban Legends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 06:06:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21266282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadhahvar/pseuds/shadhahvar
Summary: They say when you repeat her name while spinning in front of a mirror three times, Bloody Mary always answers... but of course, Leo knows that isn't true. Trying it out in the hotel bathroom with Phichit and Guang-Hong is just harmless fun.Isn't it?





	Bloody Mary

**Author's Note:**

> Having been part of a horror project in fandom last year, I'm finally posting the uncut version of the story I shared there here right before midnight of the 31st of October, my timezone. I hope you enjoy this rendition of Bloody Mary, and what follows!

“Tell us a ghost story.”

Guang Hong’s red cheeked look was equal parts giddiness and lingering effect of the cold outside. He shrugged out of his coat, sitting with his legs folded under him on the twin bed, eyes bright. Phichit leaned back against the headboard, glancing between Guang Hong and Leo, following what was said and fiddling around on his phone while they conversed. He was supposed to wait until the next evening to head out for sightseeing, and had taken Leo up on the offer to hang out.

Leo lifted an eyebrow, pulling his sweater off over his head. “Why? I’m sure you have better ones, Guang Hong.” He'd kept the junior skaters from sleeping more than one night when they were training at the same rink in Canada. 

Guang Hong waved his hand in front of his chest, offering a half smile. “It’s not about better or not better. I know some, but I want to hear one of yours. From America.”

“Hollywood makes enough horror movies, we can probably find one to watch if we look.”

Phichit wrinkled his nose, pulling one leg closer to his chest. “American horror movies are bloody, not scary.”

Guang Hong nodded, as if he and Phichit had some understanding of the foibles of mainstream Hollywood Horror that Leo didn’t possess. “Anyway, I want to hear one of yours.”

“How are you so sure I have any?”

“You don’t?”

Leo looked over his shoulder, meeting Guang Hong’s openly disbelieving, disappointed look. He didn’t like letting a friend down, especially for something as silly and simple as a story. Leo had an easier time with telling stories on the ice, and maybe they all did, but what about here?

He sat down on the bed facing opposite to Guang Hong and Phichit, looking up at the ceiling. Ghost stories, ghost stories… what ones did he even know? A few scattered movie plots rolled around in his head, and _La Llarona_, but he didn’t know how to make that sound more like the story his grandmother told him and less like the recitation of fact his aunt delivered when he was six. 

“I do know a few, but most of them…” He trailed off, lifting his shoulders in an apologetic shrug.

Guang Hong cast Phichit a sideways look of hopeful excitement. “Any of them is fine!” He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his legs and propping up his chin. 

“Yeah, Leo! I’m sure you have at least _one_ ghost story.” Phichit shifted to face Leo directly, phone resting on the bed in front of him.

Leo smiled, rubbing the back of his neck. He breathed in, mind sorting through possibilities. He exhaled, shaking his head. “Fine, fine. I’ll tell you about Bloody Mary. I don’t remember everything about how this goes, and my cousins told me this a few years ago, and I’m not saying I believe, okay?”

He waited for them both to nod before rearranging himself on the bed, looking between them as he started speaking. “A long time ago, there was a girl named Maria. She was the youngest daughter in her family, and she was really beautiful, and everyone loved her. Her family, the village, anyone who met her.” 

Guang Hong nodded toward Phichit with a grin. “She would have been like Phichit on Instagram.”

Phichit laughed, tapping on the back of his phone. “What, cultivating only the best selfies to share with the world?”

“Of course! I bet she’d even have the perfect angle down.” Guang Hong held up a hand like he was holding his phone, turning his chin to the side and peering upward, lips parted. “_Click!_”

“Were selfies even a thing before smartphones?” Leo asked, lifting an eyebrow.

Phichit sniffed. “People just called them self portraits back then.”

Leo snorted, shaking his head. “I guess. Anyway, do you want to hear my story or not?”

“We do, we do!” Guang Hong reached out and nudged Phichit’s foot with his, holding a finger to his lips in a hushing motion. Phichit good naturedly settled back, lips twitching with amusement, dark eyes focusing on Leo once again.

“Thank you, Guang Hong.” He cleared his throat, likewise trying not to smile. “Now where was I...? One day Maria didn’t come home from the village before dark like she always did, and her family worried. Both them and their neighbours went looking for her by lantern and moonlight. It was one of the sons of a family that lived who nearby stumbled across her in the jungle in the end. She’d been left for dead at the base of a tree, hidden amoung the roots. Someone had cut her from here,” he said, gesturing to the hollow of his throat, “Down to her belly button.” He drew his hand down, tracing over the centerline of his body.

Phichit shivered while Guang Hong leaned forward with wide eyes. “What do you mean left for dead? Was she dead or wasn’t she?”

Leo shook his head. “When they found her, she was still alive. She held on until she was brought home. Once she got there, she kept asking for salt. Not water or anything, just salt. After her family brought her some, she clutched it in her hand and went quiet. By the time they could get a doctor out to look at her, she’d died from blood loss and shock. When they were asked if she’d said anything else, maybe about who did it, her mother shook her head. Her father said she'd just asked for the salt. Her eldest brother was the only one who heard what she said right before she died, and he didn't tell the doctor.”

He let silence filter in, Phichit the first to break it. “What did she say?”

Leo smiled, a grim expression. “Mary... Bloody Mary. Though they didn’t know if it was her name, or a version of her name, or if she was talking about marrying. She wasn’t around to ask.”

Guang Hong nodded, expression puzzled. “What happened after that?”

Leo settled back, hands on the mattress. “The village tried to find who killed her. Her older sister found a letter tucked away in Maria’s clothes from someone they didn’t know, promising that he’d marry Maria and take her away to where she’d live well and be able to send money home to support her family.” He sat forward and lifted his hands, palms up. “Everyone thought that might be the person who killed her, but they never found him, and never knew why she had been murdered. They buried her in the cemetery and planted a tree next to her grave, which grew over the years until it swallowed most of it. Her gravestone can still be found there, cradled by the roots of the tree.”

He fell silent again, watching his audience of two. Guang Hong sat up straighter, lifting his eyebrows when Leo didn’t continue. 

Phichit still looked faintly puzzled.

“That’s a sad story, but where does the ghost part come into it? Did she haunt her family? The cemetery? Did she take revenge on her killer?”

Guang Hong rubbed at his upper arm. “What did she do?”

Leo bit his lower lip, then shrugged. “It’s more about what other people did after. The way I heard it, it started with her sister repeating Maria’s last words one night when looking into the mirror. She saw her sister’s face appear over her shoulder, smiling at her in the candlelight.”

Guang Hong leaned closer as Leo continued talking, Phichit going still as he listened. Leo tried not to smile. 

“And then?”

“Then her brother tried the same thing, only he couldn’t see her until he’d repeated her last words at least three times, spinning around after to make sure he was really alone. Maria was in the mirror when he looked back, smiling at him just like her sister. Only that time she was covered in blood from her throat down her front.” He made a slow sweep of his hand from his throat to his navel. He leaned forward, bringing both palms together in front of him. “After that, her family prayed for her so she’d be at rest, and none of them ever said her last words again.”

“Did anyone else?” Guang Hong had his arms resting on his knees now, watching Leo with rapt attention.

He nodded. “That’s where things got really creepy.”

Phichit shivered, rubbing his arms. He grinned when Leo looked his way.

“They said Maria would visit you if you said Bloody Mary in front of a mirror by candlelight. Some people said you had to spin around each time you said Bloody Mary, like her brother did, others claimed it was just how often you said her name.” He shrugged, sitting forward, resting his elbows on his legs. “My cousin told me it was both saying Bloody Mary three times and spinning in a circle after each one.”

“So what happens? She just shows up?”

"Basically. You see her in the mirror, and if you’re somewhere near trees, she comes to find you. She doesn’t have skin anymore, so she has to wear bark from the tree like it’s her skin, and then she cuts you open, puts stones in your stomach, and sews you back shut. You might live, you might die. It depends when and where you’re found.”

He shrugged, trying to appear nonchalant. There was no way for him to share how it’d felt at nine, curled under the covers of the lower bunk with his cousins, the crickets chirping outside, the sounds of cars passing on the freeway in the distance echoing through the night. How everything had felt immediate and pressing, the heat captured under the blanket stifling and welcome against the winter chill outside. How his cousin had reached out with one hand, brushing against the sides of the blanket they’d hung up to create their private fortress, and pressed a nail to the hollow of his throat, and he’d _felt_ everything she’d said was true.

_You see her in the mirror, and she smiles right at you, blood pouring out of her mouth. Better hope you’re not near a tree that night, Leo, because she’ll come clawing up from its roots and step out of its heart with her skin made of bark to find you. When she does, she’ll use one fingernail to cut you open, just like we gut a fish. Right from here, down, down, down. Then she’ll pull your skin open and fill you with rocks and sew you back up, laughing so only you can hear. _

He didn’t realise how lost he was in his own musings until Phichit scooted forward off the bed, phone in hand, to interrupt them. “You know what we should do?”

Guang Hong pushed up to his knees, sliding off the bed backward. “I know what you’re going to say,” he said, and Phichit flashed him a mischievous grin.

“Oh? You know my phone has a candlelight app?”

Leo shook off his unease, making himself smile. “I don’t think apps are quite the same thing as real candlelight.”

“Ghosts need to keep up with modern technology, too! It can’t hurt to try.”

Guang Hong looked no more convinced than Leo felt. “Is this what people do in America for fun?”

“In horror movies,” Phichit said, cheerful enough, heading toward the hotel bathroom. “Or at college parties, which might be their own kind of horror.”

Leo stood, rubbing the back of his neck and fighting off an urge to say he wanted to go to sleep. Childhood memories created lasting impressions even now, and he was unsettled.

Since when had he let that stop him from doing anything? Gut feelings out on the ice were one thing. In a hotel room over an urban legend he didn’t believe in?

_You see her in the mirror, and she smiles right at you, blood pouring out of her mouth. _

“I’m in,” he said, striding past Guang Hong to slip inside the bathroom with Phichit. The sink was inside the bathroom, leaving them with barely enough room for all three of them, and no room to not be awkward when spinning around. 

“Close the door, Guang Hong!” Phichit held up his phone with the candlelight app burning bright on his screen. Once he complied with his request, it was their only source of light in the dark hotel bathroom, painting their faces a sickly yellow-orange.

“We look horrible,” Leo pointed out, grinning. “Is that flickering supposed to be candlelight?”

“It’s a happy mimic,” Phichit said cheerfully, setting his phone on the counter before them. “What was it we’re supposed to say again?”

“Bloody Mary three times, spinning after each one.”

“Okay! Ready?” Phichit’s dark eyes found theirs in the mirror, face lit up eerily from below. 

“Ready,” Guang Hong said, shoulders set back like he was stepping out on the ice.

“Ready,” Leo said, ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach.

“Bloody Mary,” they said, voices discordant. Phichit and Guang Hong turned to the right while Leo turned left. Elbows and shoulders knocked into each other; Leo caught Guang Hong when he stumbled into his chest, only to be caught by Phichit in turn when their combined weight pitched him sideways. They broke into laughter as they regained their balance, shuffling back into place.

“How about we all turn right this time?” Leo suggested.

“Sure, let’s start over.” Guang Hong pushed his hair back out of his eyes, his phone in one hand. “On three? One, two, three—!”

“Bloody Mary,” they said, this time in harmony, turning right with minimal shoulder jostling. Their grins reflected back at them as they spun.

“Bloody Mary!” 

Another rotation with the flickering light from Phichit’s phone illuminating the room like an old television set suffering from red static snow. 

“Bloody Mary!”

Guang Hong jostled him into Phichit as they faced the mirror on their final rotation, lifting his phone to snap a selfie of their reflections. Leo met his own triumphant gaze with a smile. A blur of movement in the mirror between his head and Guang Hong’s caught his eye. He glanced over his reflected shoulder, peering into the shadows of the bathtub.

White teeth and white eyes met his from the depths of a dark, craggy face framed with thick tangles of black hair. Blood burbled out of a lipless mouth, trickling down rough skin to drip off the poorly formed point of a chin. He froze, smile fading, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Laughter echoed in his ears and the camera flashed, Leo struck suddenly blind as Phichit howled and Guang Hong cried out, “Sorry!”

Pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, he spun around, facing the bathtub. “Did you see that?” he called out, pulling his hands away to blink through the afterimage of light on his retinas. “Did you see?”

“See what? Guang Hong’s flash photography? Ow, who didn’t!” Phichit said with a laugh.

“I’m so sorry!”

“No,” Leo said, shaking his head as Guang Hong fumbled for the door handle. “Not that, did you see the girl?”

“What girl?” Phichit rubbed at his eyes, turning his head to blink rapidly at Leo.

“The one who was right there! In the tub!”

Guang Hong and Phichit looked to the bathtub in unison. The empty bathtub. 

Leo stepped closer, peering into the bathtub and crouching down to run his hand across the bottom. There was no dirt, no blood, nothing. The bathtub was clean.

“Leo, that’s not funny. You saw someone?” Guang Hong held his phone close to his chest, staring at Leo.

Phichit reached out, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Guang Hong took a picture. Ghosts are supposed to show up as light in photographs, aren’t they? If there was anything there, we’ll know.”

Leo didn’t respond, but Guang Hong nodded, hurrying out of the cramped bathroom and hovering outside in the narrow hallway. Leo allowed Phichit’s reassurance to bolster him enough to leave the dark bathroom, though it didn’t stop him from pausing by the door.

“I’m turning on the lights,” he said, giving Phichit a chance to shield his eyes while grabbing his phone. Bright fluorescents flooded the small space, chasing away the shadows. 

He left the lights on as he walked out and sat next to Guang Hong where he’d perched on the edge of the hotel bed. He stared down at his friend’s phone, willing himself to believe there would be nothing there. He had an overactive imagination, that was all. 

Guang Hong brought up his photo gallery when Phichit settled down on his other side, opening the most recent photograph. Everyone’s face was washed out, Leo and Phichit’s eyes reddened by the flash, Phichit laughing, Leo shocked. Guang Hong squinted and grinned, the bright flash of his camera consuming half his head.

Leo focused on the spot over his shoulder, but it was distorted and partially consumed by the flash. There was no indication of anything or anyone standing behind him.

“There’s no floating light, see?” Phichit used one finger to indicate over Guang Hong’s screen. “The only ball of light here is from the flash. No ghosts! Just someone too good at telling his own ghost stories.”

Guang Hong sighed with relief, leaning against Leo’s shoulder. “Aaah, you had me frightened. Leo, try not to scare me like that!”

He breathed out in a soft, amused huff, shoulders relaxing a fraction. “Sorry, I wasn’t trying. I didn’t think it’d still get to me. My cousin used to tell me that story to scare me, you know? She made it sound so convincing.”

Phichit leaned over and patted him on the knee. “That’s what cousins do.” He tucked his phone into a pocket, pushing off the bed to his feet and flashing Leo a grin. “Thanks for the ghost story. See you both in the morning?”

Guang Hong stood with a nod, and Leo gave Phichit a thumbs up. “Yeah, of course. Bright and early.”

After they gathered their things, Leo wished them goodnight, left alone to the silence of his room. He didn’t like it, pulling out his earbuds and hooking them up to his phone so he could listen to music as he went about getting ready for bed. He left the lights on in the bathroom, closing the door so that light still shone through when he finally decided to try and sleep. He chose the bed closer to the wall, away from the window. He couldn’t have said why.

Music eventually lulled him to sleep, familiar words and melodies carrying him past his lingering restlessness to a place beyond dreams.

\---

It was the silence that woke him.

His phone was plugged in, light reading fully charged where it lay on the pillow beside his head. His earbuds were still in place, but they were quiet, no music playing. Only the soft hum of the air conditioner cut through the room’s stillness, the temperature low enough to make him shiver under his thin blanket.

He groaned, sitting up and throwing off the covers. Why was the air conditioning on? It must have reset to some default; he couldn’t imagine Guang Hong or Phichit messing around with it earlier in the night. 

He stood, movement by the curtains drawing his sleepy gaze. Leo hesitated, heart pounding, and the movement repeated: a soft swaying of fabric hanging over the air vents. Leo rolled his eyes, letting go of the breath he been holding. There was nothing there.

Shuffling over to the thermostat, he squinted at the orange numbers claiming it was twenty-two degree centigrade. He was shivering; he’d never shiver at seventy-five degrees fahrenheit. He hit the plus sign, watching the temperature climb degrees, seeing the light next to _heat_ go live. Over by the window, the air conditioner hummed louder, followed by a musty scent of dust and burning hair. The curtains billowed, settling down again, their shadows lengthening temporarily against the wall in the indirect light coming out of the bathroom.

As the heater continued warming up, he stared at the curtains with tired eyes, his attention drifting to the corner furthest from him. The curtains seemed most still there, which made sense, being closest to the wall. He rallied his energy to shuffle back to bed, looking forward to another two hours of sleep before bundling up for the training rink, then paused.

There were dark smudges on the curtains, four parallel stains about a meter and a half up from the bottom. The stains didn’t move like the rest of the curtains did, the edge near them holding still in spite of the soft swaying. In a way, it reminded him of…

Leo stopped, heart leaping into his throat, a chill shooting down his spine.

_It reminded him of fingers._

He stared at the stains, his hands clenching into fists at his sides, breathing shallow and fast. Movement below the bottom edge of the curtain drew his attention while he stood frozen, his lips parting in a silent refusal. What might have been an insect crawling down the wall appeared, followed by another and another to its right, resolving into toes, then the form of a foot attached to a leg. The outline of it all wasn’t quite right, rough and craggy, but there was no mistaking it. Once the foot was settled firmly on the ground, another foot descended from behind the curtain, the four stains—the four fingers—tightening their hold.

There was someone in his room. 

Leo turned and bolted as those fingers drew the curtain to the side. He slammed into his door, his clammy hands slipping off the handle. He didn’t look back even when he pulled the door open, seized with the fear and certainty of what lurked behind him.

_Better hope you’re not near a tree that night, Leo, because she’ll come clawing up from its roots and step out of its heart with her skin made of bark to find you. When she does..._

He flew down the hall in a panic, twisting through intersections and barely paying attention to the numbers he passed. His coach wasn’t on this floor, but Phichit was in 413, room 413—Leo started counting down the numbers as he flung himself around another corner, choking on a shriek when he ran into an older man carrying a bucket of ice.

“No running!” he heard behind him. 

“Sorry!” he cried, apologising out of ingrained politeness even in the grip of his fear.

419.

417.

415.

411.

He spun around, scanning the doors. There was 412, and 411. Where was 413? How the hell could he not find 413?

Panic threatened to swallow him before he caught the odd indentation with its single door taking up the space next to the stairs. 413. 

He threw himself at the door, pounding with both his hands. “Phichit!” He had to wake up, he had to be there. What were the chances he was with Yuuri? Low when Yuuri was here with Victor. “Phichit, please! It’s Leo!”

The lights flickered once, twice in the hall outside where he stood. His heart threatened to burst out of his chest as he kept knocking and calling for Phichit, hoping someone, anyone would hear him. What was he supposed to do? Phichit wasn’t going to save him, he couldn’t stop what was coming. There had to be a way, there was always a way, if he could only _remember…_

The door gave way beneath his hands, Phichit’s bleary eyed face peering out of the shadows. “Leo? What’s wrong?”

“I need to come in,” he blurted out, looking over his shoulder and flinching as the lights flickered again. What was it, what helped? What laid her to rest? Prayer? God didn’t work that quickly, and he wasn’t a priest. 

“Okay,” Phichit said slowly, stepping back to allow Leo inside. “Will you tell me what has you all worked up? It’s four in the morning.” Phichit stifled a yawn with his hand, Leo closing the door with a definitive slam. He immediately backed away, pacing the short hall by the bathroom door.

“I just need to think. She’s coming, we have to stop her. I don’t want to die,” he told Phichit, glancing over to see the increasingly concerned look on the face of his friend and fellow competitor. “I really don’t want to die.”

“Leo, you’re not going to die. What’s going on? You’re… are you okay?”

He laughed, a high pitched sound close to hysterical. “No,” he said, the confession ready and simple. “Not really. I need to _think._”

Bloody Mary. What were Maria’s last words? The only thing she’d said. Only—there was something she’d asked for, wasn’t there? Yes, there had been. The salt. She’d asked for salt when she was brought home, and she’d held it in her hand until she died.

Salt.

Phichit reached out, hesitant as he touched Leo’s shoulder. He stood taller than Phichit barefoot, though not by much. For all purposes they were eye to eye when Phichit caught his attention, expression serious, concern palpable. “Leo, will you slow down and tell me what’s going on? Do you want me to call your coach?”

Leo blinked at him, clasping both hands over his shoulders. “Salt,” he said, wide eyed and serious. “I need salt, right now. Do you still have your complimentary condiments?”

Phichit nodded once, brow furrowed. “Yeah, but—”

“Thank God,” Leo said, dropping his hands away from Phichit’s shoulders and rushing over to where the electric kettle and tea and instant coffee were stored. He poured out the sugars in their packets, thumbing through them looking for the salt. Green, yellow, pink, white—yes! He held it up, read the bold print **s u g a r**, and threw it to the side.

“It might be in the utensil packet,” Phichit said, trying to sound unconcerned from where he watched Leo to his right. The light overhead dimmed and brightened, Phichit frowning as he looked up. “Bulb must be going out.”

“No,” Leo said, not bothering to clarify as he tore into the utensil packaging, where the black spork and knife sat wrapped in a paper towel. He pulled on them all, dumping them onto the top of the dresser and shaking out the napkin. Two packets fell out, one checkered black and white, the other red and white.

Salt. Leo reached for the tiny packet, smiling with a manic sort of energy. “I’ve got it—”

His words died on his tongue when he turned to Phichit under the flickering light. There was a third head standing as tall as they were visible over Phichit’s shoulder. Thick black hair fell in waves from the crown of a forehead darker than either of them, the whites of black eyes drawing his attention in. Strips of bark covered her skin like paper mache all laid down in the same direction, hugging the contours of her gaunt face. She had no lips, only a slit where her mouth was, raw and disturbing in its perpetual grin, white teeth revealed beyond the open slit, long and gumless. Blood swelled from behind her teeth, spilling over and out, down to the point of her chin, dripping to her chest on its inevitable path to the carpet.

Her hands were gnarled claws, her nails black and curling, looking more like talons than fingernails. Phichit’s back was to her as she reached out, her hand hovering a scant few centimeters over his shoulder.

Leo fumbled the packet of salt, tearing through the top with his teeth as he reached for Phichit, fisting a hand in his shirt to haul him forward. Talons swept down over where Phichit had stood, Leo twisting to get his friend behind him, to place himself between Phichit and the danger they’d called into this world.

He lost control of his bladder as the fear surged through his chest, the warmth of it spilling down his inner thighs, but he had to ignore it. Couldn’t give himself time to think, because the tip of her talon was there against the hollow of his throat, drawing blood as it pierced his skin.

_She’ll use one fingernail to cut you open, just like we gut a fish._

He clasped his hands around hers, just barely stopping her from moving. Salt burned on his tongue, the rest of it pressed into her palm, his will as insistent here as in his execution on ice.

“_Maria_,” he said, staring into her fathomless eyes, seeing Death staring back. “_Que en paz descanse_.”

For a moment, there was only Phichit’s shout at his back and the endless dark of her eyes. Then they closed, her head bowing forward, her talon pulling away.

He heard the rasp of words past her lipless mouth. “_Vaya con dios._”

The lights flickered, and she was gone. 

Leo collapsed, his knees giving out, leaving him on the floor sitting in his own mess. He turned his hand over, finding the salt packet gone, no grain of salt remaining. Drops of blood littered the carpet behind where Phichit had stood, but nothing else. She might have never been there at all, if it weren’t for those few drops of blood and the missing salt.

Phichit crouched next to him, speaking high and fast, his eyes wide. “Leo, what the hell was that? What the hell was that!”

He wanted to vomit. Instead, he counted his breaths in, then out, leaning into Phichit’s hand where it clung to his arm. “Maria,” he said when he could find words again. He rubbed at his throat, the sting of it making him wince. When he pulled his hand away it was smeared with a streak of blood. “Bloody Mary.”

They sat in near silence, Phichit keeping his hold on Leo, Leo unable to form any other words past the confusion of exhaustion in his brain. 

“Hey, Phichit?”

“Yeah?”

“May I borrow some pants?”

“... Yeah, of course. You can borrow the shower, too, if you want.”

“That’d be nice.” He didn’t move, his legs still too weak. “Oh, and Phichit?”

“Yes?”

“Next time you want to play with ghosts? Don’t.”

“All right.” He paused, squeezing Leo’s arm. “... Do you think we could have asked for a selfie—”

Leo reached back and lovingly, with great exhaustion, pushed down on Phichit’s head.

“_No._”

“Worth asking,” Phichit said at a mumble, and they both snorted, then laughed until they collapsed side by side with tears in their eyes, stomachs hurting more than Leo’s pride. They were alive.

If only they could stay that way.


End file.
